


Words

by SkepticOrange



Series: Prompt Fills [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-18 23:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4724534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkepticOrange/pseuds/SkepticOrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: “Every human has their soulmates last words to them engraved into their skin from birth.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words

       He’d asked his mother once before, when he was far too young to understand how cruel his question was, about the engraving on her forearm. He supposed the location was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing for its easy accessibility-- the marking could have just as well been on her back-- a curse for the words themselves.  
       He’d asked his mother once before, when he was far too young to recognize the pained grimace on her lips as she ran her fingers over the words, “No one will love him; that boy is a monster.” She gave him a tense smile that he wasn’t aware was fake at the time and murmured, “It means nothing Sherlock. Nothing at all.”

-

       He’d listened to his teacher intently when she explained the ‘Soul Mark’. Her face had been lifeless, free of expression, and her fingers brushed over her hip surreptitiously throughout her explanation, “The Soul Mark appears at birth, even if your mate isn’t born before you. The Mark can be anywhere on the body; it’s not always easy to find. Once you hit puberty, the Mark will shed, peel, and grow darker. It itches unbearably during this process, which makes it the easiest time to find where your Mark is if it’s not immediately noticeable.”  
       His eyes had shone with interest though none of it seeped into his outward demeanor. It was possibly the only time since his mother had hired this teacher that he’d felt the need to listen to her. Noticing she had his attention for both the first and possibly last time, she murmured, “The Mark is a quote of your soul mate’s last words to you.”  
       He’d been eight.  
       He’d been intrigued then.  
       He’d been too young.

-

       He was twelve when the bitterness truly set in. He’d made the effort to see every inch of his body and he couldn’t find it. His own mother admitted that she’d never seen it on him. He had no pain and no itch. He wanted his Mark.  
       He didn’t much care to know the last word’s of a person he'd never met. He wanted the knowledge that he had someone to meet in the first place. When he went to school he analyzed the uncomfortable scratching and shifting of his peers. He recognized the moments of peace when their Mark’s didn’t itch quite so feverishly and they’d run a loving hand over the same area they’d only just scratched furiously.  
       He watched them and he burned with jealousy. He held to the belief that he was a late bloomer. He clung to the thought that, in a year-- maybe two-- he’d have an itch of his own to prove the words on his mother’s arm wrong.  
       

       He burned with jealousy.  
-

       He was barely thirteen when he decided the last words he’d ever say to anyone he met.  
       “The boy is a monster.”

-

       He was half into his thirteenth year when the headaches began. At first it’d been a sharp, constant pain at front of his skull. He hadn’t cried that time.  
       The fifth time, it was a blinding pain that robbed his vision for the better part of three hours.  
       He cried the eleventh time and burst two blood vessels in his left eye.  
       The twenty-second time, he screamed himself mute. He still managed to tell the hospital doctors to, “fuck off.”  
       The fifty-seventh time, he was medically sedated.  
       He was put into a medical coma the ninetieth time.  
       The one hundred and sixth time, his heart stopped for forty-five seconds.  
       He was nineteen when he realized the one hundred and seventh time wasn’t coming.

-

       He was twenty when he began to help the Scotland Yard Police. The Bitch ridiculed him for his keen eye and he returned the favor by exposing her sex affair with the Mutt. He supposed it wasn’t bestiality if they were both dogs.  
       Grey grudgingly trusted him and he was grateful for that, though he never knew how to express it. So he solved the things they were too stupid to understand without pay or gratitude.

-

       He almost felt guilty, sometimes, when he scrapped the powder into a clean line on his living room table. The guilt was never given enough time to set in though, he’d always made sure to work fast enough to beat it.

       And he’d soar.

       He almost felt guilty, sometimes, when he scrapped the powder into a clean line on his living room table. But then his wings were ripped from him as he stared into Grey’s warm brown eyes, struggling to focus but still able to recognize the bone-deep disappointment in them.

       He was guilty then.

-

       He was twenty-six when he couldn’t remember the last time he’d shaken to pieces and run back to a dirty man with a shifty stare and expensive little baggies of crystal white.  
       He was twenty-six when he met Smiles and told him he was looking for both a flat and a flatmate.  
       He was twenty-seven when Smiles found him a flat.

       He never really did expect a flatmate.

-

       He was thirty when he met Him. He knew His name in the same way he’d willfully refused to remember so many others.  
       He was thirty when he met John Watson.  
       He’d been intrigued then.  
       He’d been excited.

       He'd walked away.

-

       He was still thirty when Smiles sent his potential flatmate over to visit. He was still intrigued when he opened the door to John Watson’s face.  
       Had they not been in his own home, he’s sure he would have left once more.

-

       He was thirty-two when John told him about the heart issues he’d had as a preteen, despite a stark lack of anything but an almost, “disturbingly healthy heart.”  
       He was thirty-two when he told John about his past “headaches.”

-

       He was thirty-three when he hoped.

-

       He was thirty-three when the MRI results came back and he cried.

-

 

 

       He was seventy-seven when he reached up to brush a single tear from John’s face.  
       “I love you, John.”  
       “I love you too,” John said shakily.  
       And because John said what was on his mind, he took the liberty to say what was on John’s heart,

       “The boy is a monster.”

       And he was content.

 

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is my re-introduction back into the author portion of Archive; I hope you enjoyed. I'll be writing these little prompt fills in my spare time whilst I work on a behemoth of a story (One that I hinted at in my, now removed, fic "La Neurosis Existencial" back when my pseud was Chaus. 
> 
> I'm doing my best to only write small things I can't commit to while I work on that larger project but I'm already having some issues there because this story had the potential to be 10,000+ words. That said, I think it's more... powerful at it's current length. 
> 
> Enough of my rambling; thanks for reading and again, I hope you enjoyed this little story.  
> -S. Orange


End file.
